Religion in Human Experience

100:4.1Re­li­gious liv­ing is de­voted liv­ing, and de­voted liv­ing is cre­ative liv­ing, orig­i­nal and spon­ta­neous. New re­li­gious in­sights arise out of con­flicts which ini­ti­ate the choos­ing of new and bet­ter re­ac­tion habits in the place of older and in­fe­rior re­ac­tion pat­terns. New mean­ings only emerge amid con­flict; and con­flict per­sists only in the face of re­fusal to es­pouse the higher val­ues con­noted in su­pe­rior mean­ings.

100:4.2Re­li­gious per­plex­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; there can be no growth with­out psy­chic con­flict and spir­i­tual ag­i­ta­tion. The or­ga­ni­za­tion of a philo­sophic stan­dard of liv­ing en­tails con­sid­er­able com­mo­tion in the philo­sophic realms of the mind. Loy­al­ties are not ex­er­cised in be­half of the great, the good, the true, and the no­ble with­out a strug­gle. Ef­fort is at­ten­dant upon clar­i­fi­ca­tion of spir­i­tual vi­sion and en­hance­ment of cos­mic in­sight. And the hu­man in­tel­lect protests against be­ing weaned from sub­sist­ing upon the non­spir­i­tual en­er­gies of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. The sloth­ful an­i­mal mind rebels at the ef­fort re­quired to wres­tle with cos­mic prob­lem solv­ing.

100:4.3But the great prob­lem of re­li­gious liv­ing con­sists in the task of uni­fy­ing the soul pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity by the dom­i­nance of LOVE. Health, men­tal ef­fi­ciency, and hap­pi­ness arise from the uni­fi­ca­tion of phys­i­cal sys­tems, mind sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems. Of health and san­ity man un­der­stands much, but of hap­pi­ness he has truly re­al­ized very lit­tle. The high­est hap­pi­ness is in­dis­sol­ubly linked with spir­i­tual prog­ress. Spir­i­tual growth yields last­ing joy, peace which passes all un­der­stand­ing.

100:4.4In phys­i­cal life the senses tell of the ex­is­tence of things; mind dis­cov­ers the re­al­ity of mean­ings; but the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence re­veals to the in­di­vid­ual the true val­ues of life. These high lev­els of hu­man liv­ing are at­tained in the su­preme love of God and in the un­selfish love of man. If you love your fel­low men, you must have dis­cov­ered their val­ues. Je­sus loved men so much be­cause he placed such a high value upon them. You can best dis­cover val­ues in your as­so­ciates by dis­cov­er­ing their mo­ti­va­tion. If some­one ir­ri­tates you, causes feel­ings of re­sent­ment, you should sym­pa­thet­i­cally seek to dis­cern his view­point, his rea­sons for such ob­jec­tion­able con­duct. If once you un­der­stand your neigh­bor, you will be­come tol­er­ant, and this tol­er­ance will grow into friend­ship and ripen into love.

100:4.5In the mind’s eye con­jure up a pic­ture of one of your prim­i­tive an­ces­tors of cave-dwell­ing times—a short, mis­shapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man stand­ing, legs spread, club up­raised, breath­ing hate and an­i­mos­ity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a pic­ture hardly de­picts the di­vine dig­nity of man. But al­low us to en­large the pic­ture. In front of this an­i­mated hu­man crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Be­hind him, a woman and two chil­dren. Im­me­di­ately you rec­og­nize that such a pic­ture stands for the be­gin­nings of much that is fine and no­ble in the hu­man race, but the man is the same in both pic­tures. Only, in the sec­ond sketch you are fa­vored with a widened hori­zon. You therein dis­cern the mo­ti­va­tion of this evolv­ing mor­tal. His at­ti­tude be­comes praise­wor­thy be­cause you un­der­stand him. If you could only fathom the mo­tives of your as­so­ciates, how much bet­ter you would un­der­stand them. If you could only know your fel­lows, you would even­tu­ally fall in love with them.

100:4.6You can­not truly love your fel­lows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thor­ough­go­ing un­der­stand­ing of your neigh­bor’s mo­tives and sen­ti­ments. It is not so im­por­tant to love all men to­day as it is that each day you learn to love one more hu­man be­ing. If each day or each week you achieve an un­der­stand­ing of one more of your fel­lows, and if this is the limit of your abil­ity, then you are cer­tainly so­cial­iz­ing and truly spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing your per­son­al­ity. Love is in­fec­tious, and when hu­man de­vo­tion is in­tel­li­gent and wise, love is more catch­ing than hate. But only gen­uine and un­selfish love is truly con­ta­gious. If each mor­tal could only be­come a fo­cus of dy­namic af­fec­tion, this be­nign virus of love would soon per­vade the sen­ti­men­tal emo­tion-stream of hu­man­ity to such an ex­tent that all civ­i­liza­tion would be en­com­passed by love, and that would be the re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.